Before the sun had made itself known Rali was off and moving and already aching in both shoulders from winding the crank of the well, all the water sitting beside her smug and faintly mud-scented in its buckets. She glimpsed up at the horizon and saw the first fresh light of dawn top the distant hills, already flexing itself to peel away the damp chill of the night.
“Fuck you,” she said, wearily. And then she was off.
First things first were stumps. Every spring she had cleared the stumps from every field, and every spring all of them would have mysteriously reappeared. She would’ve hired an exorcist to look into it, but there was no money for that.
There was no money for an awful lot of things.
Like, for example, a mule to help her plow and till and drag the stumps out of the ground. So instead she shovelled and chopped and swore at them until they moved
Then there was a break for a late breakfast of scraps from last breakfast.
It was not a very good breakfast but that was all part of the plan; at this point in her day she’d eat anything and enjoy it.
And then, back to it!
Rali dragged the stumps up the hill to her house, and she dragged the stumps down the hill to the woodpile. She chopped the wood, and she split the wood.
Wipe the brow. The salt in the eyes stings.
And then, back to it!
She poured water for herself, and she poured water for the trembling little squallers in their paddock. She shooed off the lurking claw-cat in the bushes, and she cursed the burning sun. She sowed the west field, and she tilled the east field. She weeded the north field, and she only noticed the monster when she pulled the last weed from between its talons.
In her defence, she’d been bent over double for an hour and the winter’s-children were already tall and flourishing, near head-high.
Rali immediately did the one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was make a sudden movement. In this case, she stood up very quickly while doing the other one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was look it in the eye.
She was spoilt for choice. There was an awful lot of eye. A soft charcoal colour with big slit pupils. And right below them a mouth that looked to have been made by splitting a crocodile in half and filling it with teeth.
It yawned at her. The tongue didn’t curl, which seemed unfair given how thoroughly it reminded her of the claw-cat in that moment.
Rali nodded once at it, did the third one thing she knew she shouldn’t, which was turn her back to it, and walked across the field through her yard inside her home and to her kitchen table, where she stuffed her fist into her mouth up to the wrist and screamed as long and silently as she could manage.
***
Rali made tea. It seemed like the best decision she could make at the time, it gave her something to do with her hands that wasn’t watching them shake, and since her hands were shaking it took almost an hour to make and longer still to drink. It was the harsh stuff, made from a real curdleroot she’d dug out from under the steps a year ago, dried-out and stringy and pupil-shrinking, and when she finished her first cup she felt almost human; her second cup made her almost normal; and her third cup made her forget how fear worked so she decided what the hell.
She peered out the door.
No monster.
She slowly paced the length of the house, checking around each corner.
No monster.
She climbed atop her roof and stared as far afield as she could.
No monster.
And then she went back to it, but with a lack of emphasis and rigor that she would’ve found appalling any other day. But flaming snakes alive, she had an excuse to have a bit on her mind right then.
Also the curdleroot was giving her the shakes pretty bad.
***
The next morning was entirely normal, which Rali considered deeply suspicious.
She crept out the door and looked around and wasn’t immediately eaten, but that wasn’t as reassuring as it could’ve been.
So she worked at the well, and she gave the squallers their water early (they were still asleep, soft things), and she told herself it wasn’t at all an excuse to keep herself from walking out into the fields and she hated how poor a liar she was.
If only her sister were here. That woman could lie a river right out of its bed.
Rali walked down into the south fields, shoulders slumped, brain tense, ready for anything, prepared for the worst, and was completely and utterly unprepared to find every single remaining stump in the field piled into a grody heap in its center, roots and all.
“Fuck,” she said involuntarily, and knew her mother would’ve smacked her. “What the fuck?” she elaborated, and that would’ve been soap in her mouth. “What the fucking fuck?” oh this was all beyond the pale.
She stared at the pile, then stared behind the pile, then stared around the pile. But there was no monster, and there was a job to do, so in the end Rali’s duty won out over her shock and she started dragging them back to the woodpile.
The monster was dozing on the roof of her house. It cracked an eyelid at her as she towed the first stump by, red glow soft in the early morning light.
“Thanks,” said Rali.
It blinked, then did not pounce at and devour her.
Her hands still shook all day, but that helped. And so did a little more curdleroot.
***
The next day the stumps she hadn’t chopped yet were crushed into very small splinters in the middle of the woodpile. The monster was dozing on top of the woodpile.
The day after that the south field had been re-tilled by giant claws, and it was curled around her house.
The day after that the north field’s weeding had been performed – if somewhat inexpertly – by a pair of titanic jaws, and it was sleeping in the crushed patch she’d first found it in.
And so on. And so forth. And again. And again.
Seven days in Rali woke up in the middle of the night with the back of her neck tingling (she’d run out of curdleroot earlier that day), walked outside, and tripped over the monster’s tail. It was crouched in the middle of her yard, where it was very, very carefully attempting to work the crank of the well.
“I think I’d better do that bit,” she said. “You can go eat the damned claw-cat.”
***
Things became much easier after that. (Sometimes – the experiment with the plough failed, on account of the monster possessing a rather large and inconveniently inflexible tail). Open and honest communication always helps.
Rali sowed the seeds in the south field, and the monster reaped the sprouted winter’s-children in the north field with its bladelike paws.
Rali spread the squaller-dung over the freshly sown fields, and the monster stood next to their paddock to ensure they produced plenty more.
Rali weeded, weeded, and weeded again, and the monster tried to weed was politely dissuaded and settled for standing directly over her as the sun blazed, acting as mobile shade while its tongue lolled from its mouth.
Rali went into town and bartered away the harvested winter’s-children, and the monster stayed behind and ate three claw-cats and one lurk that thought a paddock of unattended squallers looked very tasty.
Rali invited visitors over to talk shop, and the monster hid behind her house until it sneezed and she had to make very awkward excuses to get them off the farm without looking around first.
And so on and so forth through the blazing summer and into the rusting trees of autumn and the harvest welling up out of the land, which was harvested in equal parts by both of them. Rali handled the delicate grains, the monster dug up the tough tubers, and if the crop was a little more slashed than usual neither Rali nor her bartering partners mentioned anything of it.
For the first time in half a decade, she had a surplus.
“Go away,” she told the monster.
It gave her a soulful look, insofar as it was possible with that face.
“Not forever, just for the afternoon. Go mess around in the woods or something. It’s a surprise.”
It took her a little longer than expected – it had been ages since she’d seen her mother make the big oven-pits, covered in slow-burning grasses – but it all came back ready enough. And if the tubers were a little charred, so what? It brought out the flavour, which was good because the grainy porridge was filling but it wasn’t exactly lively.
A giant cold snout bumped Rali’s back and thanks to many months of practice she didn’t jump out of her skin.
“Eat up,” she said, and the monster dropped a giant and only slightly bloody (at the muzzle) stag on the embers.
She stared at it. Its flanks wobbled with autumn fat.
“And this is what you’ve been living off’ve all year?” she asked.
The monster made a small and affirmative noise.
She looked at the stag, and she looked at the monster, and she looked at the table and its porridge and its charred tubers.
“What the hell,” she said. “Mom always said I’d be a lousy farmer. No work ethic.”
***
It was a good six weeks before anyone checked in on Rali’s farm and found it empty; paddock, yard, and home alike. The weeds had already taken over, and the fields were – somehow – full of stumps.
The squallers never did not stop following the two of them.